Oranges
by Sakusha
Summary: Have you ever had an emotional attatchment to a food? Duo does and he'll tell you why.


Pure fluff. Duo POV. Have you ever had an emotional attachment to a food? Duo does, and he'll tell you why.

Thanks to my beta, Krysana, a real sweetheart.

**Oranges**

Since my first visit to earth, I have tried all kinds of fruit. I tried anything I could get my hands on and then some. Watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries...you name it, I've tried it. Though, after I bit into a kiwi, I was a little more discriminatory. Yuk! Kumquats aren't too high up on my list either.

But now that I have tried just about every fruit known to man, I have to say that oranges are still my absolute favorite, hands down. You just can't beat a good old-fashioned orange. They're juicy and sweet and they have a quality about them that I just cant explain.

Lemme tell you a story, and maybe you can understand what I'm talking about. Actually it's one of those stories within a story things, but, well.... here it goes...

We didn't get a lot of produce on L2. We couldn't grow much more than weeds, so everything had to be imported. Importing takes money and L2 is about as poor of a colony as you can get. We didn't import a hell of a lot. All the good stuff was shipped off to colonies that could pay high tariffs.

Sure we got stuff. Potatoes were big. Onions. Apples on occasion. But most of it was stuff a grocery store on Earth wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. Sure I knew what an orange was. I knew they were, well, _orange_. Solo had said he had one once. Said it was like havin' a little piece of sunshine. I didn't get what he was talking about then, but I do now.

During my short stay at the Maxwell orphanage we had celebrated a Christmas. Never celebrated a holiday before. So when Sister Helen handed out oranges on Christmas morning, I didn't get it. I mean, no one ever _handed_ me anything.

I wasn't a very trusting child. I just sat there and waited for someone to tell me what the catch was. Father Maxwell assured me that the orange was mine to keep, no strings attached.

Have you ever just held an orange? I mean just sat and felt it. They way the outside is kinda glossy and smooth even though its a bit puckered. It's cool and firm and you can smell how sweet it is right through the peel.

Then I started to peel the thing and it was just like opening a present. I carefully unwrapped the orange and studied the fruit inside. There were eight juicy pieces and I ate them one by one as slowly as I could, savoring every minute.

It had to be the best damn thing I'd ever had.

I found out later that Sister Helen had saved for months just to buy those oranges. She'll never know just how much she brightened my world that Christmas.

Remember I said this is one of those stories within a story things? Well, here goes the next part.

Me and Heero have been together for almost five years now. It's been a long _long_ road. Don't get me wrong, it's been pretty damn good, you know? But sometimes we...clash. You put two testosterone driven ex-soldiers together and it's bound to happen.

It happened on Christmas Eve morning.

It wasn't anything really, just a disagreement. But in no time I had gotten wicked pissed and Heero got more than wicked pissed and we blew up at each other. We both said some things that were...not nice.

He took off on his motorcycle. I tried to leave the house too...except that I took the manifold off my car two days before, and hadn't gotten around to putting the damn thing back together yet.

I stomped around the garage before throwing my keys full force into the garage wall. That proved to be a brilliant move. They went right through the drywall we just installed. After a string of inventive curse words, I pulled my keys out of the wall. I stood back and assessed the damage.

And then it hit me that I didn't even know what the hell we had started to argue about in the first place. It was something stupid and petty and it just built into this... thing. Neither one of us wanted to back down and say how stupid it all was. And it was. Not being able to remember why we started arguing in the first place just proved it.

By early afternoon, I had the hole in the wall spackled and I finally had my car back in one piece. Only now I didn't feel like going anywhere. Heero had been gone for hours and I felt like hell that we had fought earlier that morning. I didn't care who was right or who was wrong or who said what. I was honestly sorry that we'd argued and I just wanted it to all be better.

I headed back to the house to take a shower. Being covered with oil and sweat made me feel utterly disgusting. I used all the hot water we had before I got out. It was just the catharsis I'd needed. I toweled off my hair and went to go find myself some sweats.

As I stepped out of the bathroom, I wasn't terribly surprised to find Heero sitting on the edge of the bed. He looked up and gave me a tentative smile. I pretended that I wasn't stark naked and mildly damp, and gave him a little smile back.

"Hey." Ok, so I didn't go for 'sorry' right away.

"Hey." He didn't say sorry right away either, so there!

He was holding something in his hands and it took me a minute to figure out what it was. An orange. One simple medium sized, sticker on the side of it, orange. He held it up to me with a hopeful look in his eyes. It was quite possibly the single most romantic thing he'd ever done.

Years ago, I told him about the orphanage. I told him about the oranges. He remembered. More importantly, he knew just how special they were to me.

His apology was ten times better than mine and didn't need any words.

I took the orange from his hand, moved so that I was inside his legs and looked down into those blue eyes and whispered, " I'm sorry too."

Heero stood as he pulled me closer into his embrace. I won't tell you what we did after that, 'cause it's kinda private. What we share is more than I could ever put into words anyway.

You see, to me an orange isn't just an orange. Sure, its a great snack and the quite possibly the best fruit Earth has to offer, but that's not it. When I have an orange, I think of hope. I think of forgiveness. I remember all the things I have gained instead of all the things that I have lost.

I remember that there are little pieces of sunshine all over your life, you just have to look for them.

A/N - The idea of Duo receiving oranges at the orphanage was taken from Sunhawk's Ion arc. (Thank you, Sunhawk.)


End file.
